The sintered metal porous material is mainly used as a filter material. In specific application, the sintered metal porous material is made into a filter element in certain shape and structure. The existing sintered metal porous material filter elements are substantially of a tubular or plate-type structure. Their preparation principles are similar. i.e., roughly, raw powder constituting the metal porous material is pressed into a tubular or plate-type compact via a special mold (generally adopting an isostatic pressing technology), and then the compact is sintered to obtain a product.
The application range of the above tubular or plate-type sintered metal porous material filter element is limited due to the influence of its shape, structure and corresponding attendant requirements for filter devices and systems. However, the inventor of the present application discovers that the sintered metal porous material filter element has stronger advantages than conventional filter elements (e.g., organic filter membranes) on the aspects of chemical erosion resistance, material irreversible pollution resistance, mechanical strength and the like, so it is significant to develop a novel sintered metal porous material filter element capable of correspondingly substituting original filter elements in many fields. Based on the background, the applicant creatively proposed and developed a flexible porous metal foil, i.e., a sheet which is made of a metal porous material, can be bent relatively freely and even can be folded.
The paper “Research Development on Ti—Al Intermetallic Compound Porous Material, Jiang Yao et al., Chinese Material Development, Vol. 29, No. 3. March 2010” in section 2.3 describes a preparation process of a Ti—Al intermetallic compound paper membrane. The paper membrane made of a Ti—Al intermetallic compound is still a rigid material.